For a breathless instant while we both stood still, I felt a wondrous kinship with the wild. This was our world, this fragrant, green-clothed hill, And God loved me, and I loved nature's child.
Its liquid eyes begged of me not to shoot, Reproached me for usurping its domain. For in its eyes, I was the untamed brute.... It was I who fled -- and I won’t hunt again.
A hunter comes face to face with a fawn, and for one suspended moment neither of them moves. In that stillness the speaker feels a sudden closeness to the animal, as if the hill belongs to them both and even God's love covers them equally. The mood is gentle and almost reverent, like a held breath.
Then the second stanza turns. The fawn's "liquid eyes" seem to plead with him and accuse him of trespassing in a place that was never his. What's striking is the reversal: through the animal's gaze, the hunter sees himself as the "untamed brute," the real danger in the woods. The poem suggests that shame, not fear, is what sends him running. The final line is quiet and firm, a plain vow with no fuss. The poem ends not on drama but on a change of heart, a moment of recognition so strong it alters how he will live.